austraLasia #2118

It ain't all over 'til the fat lady sings!

ROME: 5th March 2008 -- We wouldn't like you to think that everything is just winding down smoothly now, would we!  It is moving inexorably to the final moments, no doubt about that, and today with Spring in the air and a break - for most - from the relentlessness of commissions and assemblies, 'the boys' are mostly out and about, enjoying the sunshine around San Callisto or have moved into town.
    But not before the morning assembly revealed that 'the urgency of evangelisation' is a tough nut to crack, if indeed we are sure what it is in the first place! Commissions yesterday were asked to hone their 'iuxta modums', and it didn't take long to realise at least one thing that was happening: the drafters had tossed out quite a few bits and pieces for one good reason or another, and this morning's iuxta modums were busy putting them back in again!  Not sure who will win that battle, I guess it's whoever comes last....and maybe that will be the drafters (or even the translators!).
    Just so you can follow this, it is only the linee d'azione (which we are for the moment calling 'guidelines' in English) that are being manhandled this way. And also so you can get the flavour of the debate at this point, one commission says of this section, evangelisation, that "the terminology about evangelisation sounds ambiguous" and the order in the document "doesn't respect the logic of the process of evangelisation".  Another commission is still adding points to guidelines, while yet another was giving a Gal 5:12 trim to it all.
    There's one troublesome line in there causing some heartache: all about proposing that young people "live their human experience like Jesus Christ lived it". If taken as read, then it's a theological and psychological stretch. There's a couple of fixes around for this one, so let's see what comes out in the wash eventually. 
    Then, there's all the contexts in which Salesians live today.  Some of these contexts are being named in geographical terms, and are put up as 'challenges' for enculturating evangelisation. That can be a dicey argument.  I heard an Indian representative at a sub-meeting the other day say, very wisely, that while lots of Salesians were heading 'out there' somewhere to face the unevangelised hordes, 'ad missio' was a pretty demanding reality right back home in the dozens of reception centres, hostels, works for street kids that Indian Salesians are running.  He was urging people to look at all the kids of many religious extractions or none that we have admitted to these places, and start our 'ad missio' there.
    This naming of challenges in terms of geography is also cropping up in the 'new frontiers' debate.  Just what are new frontiers, or rather, where are they?  The 'cat' got amongst the 'pigeons' again today with an intervention that said: "While not ignoring the importance - cultural, historical and religious - of Europe, I would like to suggest that the future of the Congregation may lie elsewhere. The statistics provided for this Chapter make that clear....apostolically and spiritually, the Lord is rewriting the geography of the Salesians of Don Bosco. Let us read more attentively what the Lord is rewriting!"
    They say that it ain't all over 'til the fat lady sings which, as one looks around the aula magna, means the arguments may go on well after the curtain call next Saturday.
      _________________
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Title: australasia 2118
Subject and key words: SDB General, GC26, Evangelisation
Date (year): 2008
ID: 2000-2099|2118